One, two, three, whenever you're ready. Hi, I'm Steve Shi. I'm a psychotherapist, a podcaster, and a writer, and I am the guest at The Honest Drink today. Welcome to the show, Steve. This is your second time. What are you excited about this time versus last time? I'm going to redeem myself this time because last time I thought my English was not very smooth, and I've been seeing some English-speaking clients, so I get a lot of practice. Hopefully,

Hopefully this time I'll be more confident, I guess. Nice. Well, maybe that question answered my question. What's your least favorite thing about being here right now? That I have to speak English here. Because last time I was here, I was so frustrated. Because of the language limit, I can only express maybe like 10% of what I wanted to say. If I did Chinese, it's probably 20%. So it's a little higher. Yeah. Well, let's get to it. I'm Justin. I'm Howie. I'm Eric. Welcome to The Honest Drink. And please welcome back Steve Schumacher.

She.

Yeah, a lot of things happen in the world. But talking about boxing, you got this Inner Wild thing going on. Yeah. What's that all about? So we started a project last time I talked to you guys, and it's called Inner Wild. And it's basically a group of a community where people come together and train in boxing. But at the same time, they also...

share and discuss issues related to mental health and psychological and personal growth. So what happens is we have two-hour sessions. The first hour, we do boxing. The second hour, everybody sits down in a group. And we just talk about our experiences and our feelings and also just problems and issues in our lives and stuff like that. Awesome. Yeah, and it's been a really interesting experience so far because most people who come in are people who...

probably never did any martial arts in the past or even never fought anybody in the past. And most people are, some of them don't even work out sometimes, you know? So, but like this, this is like a very new experience for people, especially we have maybe 80% of our members are female. So it's a breakthrough for them to be able to punch somebody in

for the first time in their lives. So what we- - They're punching each other? - Yeah, they're punching each other. - Like in the face? - The first session they come in, we make them fight. - Like spar? - Yeah, yes. - Like real sparring? - Real sparring, the first time. - Wow, I didn't know that, that's awesome. - Yeah, yeah. - Any broken noses? - No, no, no, no. They can't punch that hard. They're like amateur armors, amateurs. So it's very safe and we made sure that everybody's safe.

But just creating that atmosphere, that experience. Because if you go to traditional boxing gyms, it's very hardcore. The coach is probably very muscular. It's mostly men. It's intimidating. Yeah, it's very intimidating. But when they come in, we are all really friendly and we make everybody feel comfortable. And we minimize people's body shame as much as we can. So...

So what happens is a lot of people come in, they will tell us, I'm scared of fighting and I never like to have conflicts with anybody. But after the training, they're like, I fucking love this. Is there something about combat sports in general? Like, why would you choose boxing? Is there something about it that you feel ties in with the idea of mental health? Sure. Because there's direct body contact.

right? You get hit. It's not like tennis where you're hitting the ball to cross the net. When you're hit on the body or on the head, it's like a wake-up call. You know, you got to focus. You got to be sharp. You got to protect yourself. So there's very little room for thinking, for rumination. It's just in the moment focus. Yeah. That's interesting because like one is it just like resets you because like

if you go in for a session, you're actually trying to snap out of something. - Yeah, yeah. You don't have space for thinking or rumination at all. You just have to, you don't have space to think. You just have to react. Use your body instead of your mind. And that's our thing. Like we think, for modern human beings, we rely too much on our brains, our cognitive abilities, but then there's part of us that's more primitive, intuitive,

And that's where, you know, the life energy comes from, you know. And when you're using too much brain, you get depressed. Yeah. Well, that's overthinking things. Yeah, it's overthinking. Overthinking. So, this is very... It's like using this natural instinct to snap people out of it. Yeah. So, they have to immediately react and emotions come out. But in sort of a safe format, because normally when you have emotions come out, maybe...

you're mad at something or angry, you don't even know why this one's kind of bringing it out in a more, it feels like neutral way. And then it's super instinctive. And then I think, um,

you get some of that emotion, that negative energy out. The physicality, I think, is also helpful. It's a very socially acceptable way of expressing like some of the- Yeah, punching people in the face is a very socially acceptable way of working things out. I want to try that out on you sometime. I know. That's our problem. Just get all our aggression out on each other. See, you never. You know, we just talk shit. We're so weak. Let's punch each other in the face. You know what's interesting is, because before, you always think about the idea of the release. Yeah.

The stress release. The catharsis. Right? Yeah. And you always relate that to boxing, to working out, to any type of physical activity because when you get too riled up, when you get too winded up, you need to release it. And you never think about the idea of taking it.

And I love this right now. This is opening my eyes a bit. Yeah, no, that's a very good angle. A lot of people, when they get punched, because in our training, there's part of it where we learn defense. So you have to put your gloves up. You have to take a couple of shots. And sometimes we ask them to punch harder to test if your defense is tight.

And that's when people, a lot of people say like that's their favorite part of it because they never took a punch before. But now they feel like, oh, I actually have the power to protect myself. Even if I get punched, I'm okay because I can take it. And that's empowering because, you know, people usually underestimate how much damage they can actually take. Like they're scared of being even touched by somebody. But now it's like, okay, punch me a couple of times. I'm okay. I can fight back. And I imagine...

When you're working through issues that you have and when you take boxing

which really mimics life of what happens, like you're going to get hit in the face. And then that serves as an anchor because then when you go back into the real world, then you can relate to something. It helps your mind, train your mind to not default to the same behavior every single time. So imagine like you're in some kind of, you know, you get in fight with your family, you know, with your boss, whatever it is, right? You can give a lot of therapy, but once they get in that situation, they have a muscle memory to it.

Yeah, for sure. But if you put them in a different analogous situation that's easy to remember because boxing is just so visceral...

And then the next time they get into some kind of verbal argument, they're like, wait a minute. I just got punched in the face. That's not a big deal. And so it's almost like the way it rewires your mind in a way where you can step out more easily. We actually have like couples coming in together and, you know, even just for a couple of times. And they say the biggest change that they have now is that they can fight now.

Because in the past Are the couples fighting each other? Yeah the couples Not physical fight But like having arguments Because in the past They were always just Walk away I mean in the class Are they fighting each other? No no no In their lives In their lives Because you know You don't pair them up right? In the class Justin's like I'm bringing my wife there

Well, we can do that if you want, you know, special requests. Here's the funny thing. In America, you can never do that, right? Like, that would be very taboo. Really? Why? Because there's a lot of domestic, like, because of the domestic violence in the US. And typically, it's more...

between men against women, that's something very sensitive because it happens and there's more awareness around that. Oh, I never thought about that, but okay. He's like, wait a minute, I gotta change the format. I just did a couple's afternoon. What if you got a guy and just like patted him up and just let all the women just take out all their anger on this guy? I'm always that guy. I'd volunteer. I'm always that guy. I would volunteer for that, honestly. He would love it. In a weird way. I see like some kind of brace that he had, like a knee brace and all this stuff. Did you get beat up?

Yeah, that's actually from boxing, but not from beating up. I just fucked on my knee. So I'm hearing all this...

And I'm really inspired by it because I love the idea of having the therapeutic session afterwards, the talking session, the one hour of talking. And to me, by combining that with the physical activity is perfect harmony. Yeah. Because you're using everything, right? Your mental state and your physical state to be able to express yourself and to be able to search for answers, let's say. For sure. And...

I'm just so curious, what are some of the issues that people talk about that they're battling or they're facing?

We started doing this because my wife had this idea. She was a little bit depressed last year, so she started boxing and she told me it was very energizing for her, especially when you're pushing, when you're punching very hard without thinking. It's almost like your body gets elevated to a new energy level and she felt that could help with depression. So the number one issue that people present is low energy.

Depression, when people are going through tough times and they need to find something in their lives that's active, that's energetic, that's exciting to elevate themselves out from that, you know, from the feeling down, feeling blue kind of state. That's one thing. The second thing is, I think, aggression, instrumental, constructive aggression. Because, you know, in the Chinese culture, we value harmony too much.

And consequently, aggression is almost a taboo, right? So it's like suppressed, right? Until it just explodes. It's very suppressed. And we emphasize cooperation way, way over competition. But being in a city like Shanghai, you got to know both ways. But for a lot of people, they are suppressed. They're too...

and they're too nice and sometimes they get pushed around. So when they come in, you know, and usually these two issues are related. You're interpersonally, you're always pushed around, you're always screwed over and that,

That's depressive. And it builds resentment. It builds resentment, builds a lot of negative thinking about the self. If you can't attack others, you attack yourself. So in this process, we deal with a lot of issues like that and also a lot of interpersonal issues of trust. Can I really punch you? Is that going to hurt?

And then so we'll ask people, just try it. Give it a couple of times. Do it like 50% of your strength and then 70% and then give me 100% and then I'll tell them, I'm okay. So you can actually punch me as hard as you can. So that builds like very real, experientially that builds trust. I'm trusting that you can take my punch and I'm safe and we can have a safe interaction without like hating each other. Right. And I think,

the comment you made earlier about people being reluctant to share how they feel they kind of just eat it yeah right they just internalize it as part of the culture because they don't want to like dodgy right they don't want to insult other people that there's so much care in terms of how other people feel in this very high context uh environment and then so being able to be like okay here's 50 here's 70 here maybe 100 is a little too much so

then you're able to share feedback in a way that gets your point across, but then balances the respect. So that's kind of like this. It's like you need to measure yourself, but if you never try, then the time it does come out

You'll just like, it'll explode. Like you've seen that happen with me. It's like, I hold it inside, hold it inside, hold it inside for years. And then all of a sudden it comes out. Yeah. Cause harnessing your aggression, that's something you have to practice. Yeah. Yeah. So that's not aggression. It ends up just because if you, if it builds up on the inside, it turns into a volcano when in reality it's just like, okay, you should have just said it. It's like, oh, you know, that bothered me. Done.

Well, this idea of like suppressing your feelings, your frustrations, even your anger. When you talk about, you see it so common that people are suppressing this, especially maybe in Chinese culture. How do you think that translates to societal issues on the whole, like from a larger perspective? I think it'll probably translate into people not being very aware of their rights, because

and of, you know, what they're allowed to do. And just getting ripped off is okay, you know, by your employers, by your company, or sometimes even by the government. Yeah. You think that, like,

overall in society like we become sheeps yeah do you think that like overall in society people get taken advantage of a lot yeah do you think that's a trend or a theme I think I do yeah because like you said like we're we prefer suppressing everything until they explode into something uncontrollable but the better way is to

to release it strategically and instrumentally so that you get what you need. Because if you know, like in nonviolent communication, that's all we talk about, right? Like the anger, the frustration, the aggression, they're all unmet needs, right?

But if you suppress it, then you lose sight of what the actual needs are. You just want to attack. You just want to hurt people. So you got to find like a controlled, a more calculated way of expressing anger. It's like having a pressure valve and every so often, you know, releasing some pressure. Because if you don't, it builds and builds. And if enough time passes and if enough shitty things happen to you, it's...

it builds and it becomes a monster. And even if you were to release the valve at that time, it's already too late because it's already like its own entity. It's its own being and creature that's living inside of you. It could be really dark. It reminds me of Electro.

Like when you watch some of the Marvel stuff. Remember that Jim Carrey movie, Me, Myself, and I, or something like that? Irene. Is it Me, Myself, and Irene? Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of that, where he has this split personality, and because he's been a pushover all his life, and then he just eats it, eats it, eats it, until one day this new character comes out. I was thinking Taxi Driver.

Okay. Oh, yeah. You're looking at me? Yeah. That's so scary. Like, you know, he, especially the last, you're looking at me, motherfucker. And then he kills everybody. Yeah, just like that. Well, I mean, and it's not, it's almost scary to talk about that because it's almost not joking that we see this, especially in Western society. Well, not even Western society. We were just talking a lot of things happening even in China that maybe there's a trend happening or maybe it's just becoming more obvious because of,

access to social media or whatever, but we're seeing trends of people kind of going off the deep end. And, you know, obviously as Americans, we talk about the gun violence and stuff like that.

But even here domestically, there's a lot of... The gun is just the tool of expression. And because they're so accessible, it happens more. So there is an issue with that. But even in societies that don't have access to that, maybe... But here it could be knives, right? Yeah, you see more and more. We see a spike in acts of violence. Knives in cars. Yeah, what's going on? What do you think? Yeah.

Is it more than usual? What's going on? Do you think there's a pattern here? There is something going on? Or do you think it's just coincidental? Like, do you think it's all related? I think there's a pattern or a trend because economically, you know, we're not really doing well. So when the stress of financial burden...

I think it trickles down through the hierarchy of the society. And so people at the bottom, like we were talking about earlier, people who are unemployed, middle-aged, unmarried, those are the people who will probably feel the most burden and they will probably...

Because they have nothing to lose, so they will probably express their frustrations and anger through a very terrible way. Yeah, they snap. Yeah, they snap. I think you're right. I think it is directly tied to...

to economics here. Sure, yeah. Broadly speaking, of course, everybody has their own problems that they're dealing with, but I think just generally speaking, the economy is not going so well. I have this story that recently I've noticed this year, a lot of people reach out to me, people I've worked with in the past, talking to me on WeChat, out of the blue, and just trying to rebuild that relationship, trying to remind me that they're around and that we should work together and stuff like that.

These are like vendors, right? And before, it was never like that. It was just, you know, if we want to work together, we work together. If not, then we don't really talk. We're busy making money elsewhere. Exactly. Everybody's busy. But then especially this one person contacted me last week. And I haven't worked with this person in two years. And out of nowhere...

all this text comes in and it's just kissing my ass. Like, honestly, honestly. And he never was like that. He was so cocky because he was always overbooked. He barely had time for me. You know?

And all of a sudden he's kissing my ass and all this stuff. He's like, oh, we are Tony Xue Xi and all this type of words. And I'm like, what? And I respond and then I'm being nice and I was very busy at the time. He wants something. He's like, oh, wrong person, sorry. And then so I responded. I responded and we started talking and he opened up and he was saying, he asked me, he's like, how are you doing? How's your company going? Because it's very difficult for me here.

So he totally was honest. Not like other people were just kind of like beat around the bush. He became honest. He's like, it's very difficult for me right now. I'm like, oh, okay. Tell me what's going on. He's like, well, you know how the economy is. And so he's been reducing his staff. And now he's thinking about even moving the office out because he can't afford the rent and his family to feed. And all these things are coming out. Like all of a sudden I'm a therapist now. And he just starts going off. And I'm like, Jesus, it's really bad. You know? Yeah.

When things like this start happening, combined with what we're just talking about, societal reactions, you know... Well, in your situation, was there an ask or he just wanted to talk to you? No, no, no. Did he want something from you? Yeah, basically he says, let me know if you have any projects, I'll give you a big discount. Oh. Yeah.

Which he never did before. He was so firm with... Well, when you have this kind of pressure in society, and keep in mind, we just went through a couple of years of pandemic. It's not something that just happened all of a sudden, right? These things have been sort of accumulating and people can react in different ways. I actually really appreciate how this person reacted. Yeah. Right? Like the humanity came out and imagine that you respond in also a...

a kind, you know, caring way and say, hey, like, yeah, it is hard. Well, just imagine, put yourself in his shoes. Before he texted you, the amount of ego he had to swallow himself to commit to doing that.

I mean, kudos to him, right? I mean, most people... 100%. But that could also just show maybe how desperate he was. Well, I think what Eric... Eric's point, I think, is correct because I responded in a very nice way and I asked him, like, how are you and stuff like that. I could have just been like, yeah, sure, cool, thumbs up.

Which is what I did to other people that would reach out because it was just such a generic, like, hey, blah, blah, blah, I'm around, let me know. You know, and that was it. I get it. It's short and sweet. But he was actually writing like longer messages. So I responded with a longer, more thoughtful response, which then he started building up on that. So I...

It worked, okay? So he's in my mind, and I want to throw him something. If I guess something that I think is suitable, I'm going to throw him something. And I think that's just the humanity that I think people need to have in general that helps everybody get past this difficult time. And I can bet, Steve, you're seeing a lot of these kind of issues come up, especially recent times.

Well, I think when people eventually come in and work with me in therapies, they're already at a terrible place. So I don't get to see the decline. I only see the end result, which is just terrible. And that's also what the general feeling is like in our community. People are trying to work through things, but we would actually have problems

you know, members telling us, you know, I'm in between jobs, so I can't really afford this right now. Like, I'm going to come back when I find a job. I'll definitely come back, but I need to find a job first. So we definitely see that. Yeah. I'm curious because this reminds me, I mean, this makes me think of the word vulnerability, right?

And I think like what we're talking about on one hand, maybe we're asking people to, it's okay to be vulnerable, to open up, swallow your pride, reach out, you know, vent, whatever it is. But how do you, what do you think about the balance there that we need to have when maybe we live in a world where,

people have a reason to fear showing vulnerability because it does open them up and maybe they can get hurt by showing vulnerability in some way.

I mean, what's your take on maybe finding some balance there, you know, convincing people like, hey, you know, you need to open up. Yeah, at the same time, we do live in a society where it could be really terrifying for good reason, you know, if you open up. That's a really good question because that's exactly why we have this format, Boxing Plus Talking, because the second part is very vulnerable for everybody.

But opening up does not make you a fragile person, right? You could be doing very tough things in the first hour. You could be a fierce fighter and you could feel powerful. But in the second part, you open your heart. So they're compatible. I think you can have these two sets of...

qualities at the same time. So usually I think being vulnerable is becoming a problem is when you don't have that fierce, the tough part. You get pushed over and you feel vulnerable. So vulnerable becomes self-contempt and self-pity and you think vulnerability is bad, but it's not. It's a neutral thing or it's a positive thing.

in my experience. So it's just like people have to grow claws, they have to grow teeth. - Well, and I think there's a distinction between these, there's always different flavors of this. So you probably have to have strength in order to be vulnerable, if you think of like the definition, but then being, you know, like having self pity or being in this really low emotional mind state, that's not vulnerability.

right? Vulnerability is like, I know that I have a strong shell, right? I can protect myself, right? And I choose to take my gloves down so that I can show people a side of me that maybe isn't as strong. And it's okay because none of us are perfect. At the same time, when you're in this, some of the folks that you meet, maybe the first time, they're in this weakened emotional state. They're like, it's not just complete, they're like, not

not just vulnerable, they're actually just, they have no defense at all, right? Because they can't even have positive thoughts in their head to give them the energy to actually stand up. And I think we can all relate to that, right? We all have moments of that where you're just like, you have really low energy. I still have that sometimes. And I think, but when it becomes a pattern, right? And there's a long period of time and every day you wake up and you don't have that motivation, then it becomes...

you know, a depressive state. And then I think that's scary, right? Because we probably have all gone through that kind of period in our life. And when I think about like, wow, like there was that period of time it was like that, I'm like, ooh. - I think it's an innate inclination that we are vulnerable and low sometimes. But I think when people, when we stigmatize vulnerability, then,

we become more apathic to ourselves and also to others when we see other people's vulnerabilities. Like, you know, when your ranger talk to you, if we don't like vulnerabilities, then we see other people being vulnerable, we'll laugh at them. We'll dislike them, we'll push them away.

But that's how you lose intimacy, right? So you have the whole idea of toxic masculinity. And the core issue is when a man doesn't like his own vulnerabilities, then he becomes very cruel to other people as well. So you lose that intimacy.

psychological intimacy to yourself and to others and you become isolated and that's the ultimate pain and you cannot get out of it. It totally makes sense because if you are not ever vulnerable and all you show is strength, then that's actually threatening to people that want to be close to you. So if you think about like friendship and camaraderie and relationships, if someone just never shows vulnerability, that to me is a little bit scary.

Right? Because then it's just like, oh, they're not letting their guard down. First of all, they could actually be harmful to me, you know, because they're so powerful and strong. And it might be masking something more internally that they're afraid to show a side of them as well. We have some members in a while where they punch each other and then they cry together.

And they become really good friends. Even after just a couple sessions, because that's a very unique experience. You can never do the two things together in most situations. No, but it's absolutely true. I learned this because I was taking boxing pretty seriously for a while in my life. And when you spar heavily with somebody...

afterwards, there's an immediate closeness you have with that person. And so that's even just at a generic, you know, boxing gym level, let alone maybe in a more intentional environment. Do you get the feeling that when you're like, when you're sparring, when you're punching, or even when you're just holding pads for people, it's,

it's almost like a form of communication. You can feel the other person's intentions. You can feel with every punch what they're experiencing. - Yes. - You know, like sometimes if somebody punches and you can feel he or she is hesitant. - Like what was behind that punch? - What's behind that punch? You can totally feel it. - You can totally feel it. - Yeah, it's not even verbal. Like you can't really verbalize it, but like you can feel the subtleties, right? - Yes, and that's why it just, it goes to the topic of human intuition.

And the idea of communication, interpersonal communication, goes so far beyond, I think, what we understand conventionally. And there's so many different senses and sensories that I think we're not even aware of on a day-to-day basis that we're feeding off of and we're analyzing without even knowing. Remember last week we were talking about banter? Yeah. We do like sort of verbal boxing.

that's what we do right like we yeah yeah yeah we take jabs at each other right all the time right but that brings us closer because then it's just like oh like you know he didn't really mean anything by that yeah we did a couple of uh like um like promotional um like we go to events and we have a booth there so i will go there and hold pads for people uh so there's i think some sometime last month we did a full day of uh

booth and you know talking to people I held pads for maybe 150 people through that whole day and but it's a very interesting experience because it's just like what I said like you can totally feel everybody's different you can even tell their personality by feeling their punches so I definitely think it's a very intimate like sparring and fighting each other it's like a very intimate way of

letting the other person know who you are without even speaking a word. So that's the immediate intimacy. And the other thing is, I think it's even more physical. It's just like because you're putting your hands on each other. There's physical contact. I think as human beings, we crave human contact. So this is even more so the case with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Because you're hugging each other, rolling around,

And immediately you become friends. You become very friendly. And the other example that I read about the other day is like how we, especially men, we get very attached to our barbers. They touch our heads, you know. It's kind of intimate. They wash your hair or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a, like my barber is actually, they moved and there's a new location just around here. I've followed him through three different stores.

Because we have that bond that's built on physical contact. So, you know, that's just human brain. Steve does have pretty good hair. He always comes in looking sharp. That relationship you have with your barber is something I've been looking for for years now. But I'm never like really satisfied with my haircut. So I keep switching. Steve's not going to share. Don't worry. He's like, no, that's my guy. Don't let him. No, but this idea...

And you were talking about guys before and how we behave. I do have this fear. And I don't want to boil everything down to gender. But I think...

But I think when you look at certain statistics, and if we go back to this idea of violent actions, right? And certainly, as an example, as we know in the States, you know, these mass gun shootings, like, they're all males, right? They're all males, and they're usually single. Is there that statistic that they literally are all male? Yeah. Damn. Yeah.

And anecdotally, I mean, it's like 90-something percent white male. And truly anecdotally,

Well, like how many times do you hear it's a female? Like you just don't, you really don't. Not even once. If you did, it'll be huge news now because it, because it would be an outlier. That's true. So, and, and certainly I think we would see a similar statistic for, um, you know, truly violent actions here in China as well. So it makes me think like, you know, because a lot of, I think what we talk about sometimes, and especially depending on the guests we have on, when we have Layla on, we talk about culturally speaking, um,

women have had less power here, and certainly that's true. And so I think there's a lot of pent-up emotions there, for sure.

What I'm also really worried about though, going forward and Professor Galloway talks, is it Scott Galloway, right? Scott Galloway, the Prof G, he talks about this a lot in the States. He talks about this generation of like left behind men and these single men who are just being, feel like they're being completely left behind in society because of this associated guilt and this woke movement and everything. And they just feel like, you know, it's...

Men, you've had your time. Now it's time to focus on minorities. It's time to focus on women. And all these things are good, but then you have this generation of men who are feeling really left behind. And the ones that are disenfranchised maybe are more likely to commit acts of violence, especially coupled if they have mental health issues. I fear...

Could there be something similar happening here in China as well with the male demographic, given the fact that there are, you know, less people are getting married, there's a lower dropping birth rate issues. And I think these are all symptoms of there's just less relationships happening and less real connection happening.

And what about like the single male population here in China? Is there a danger lurking there in the sense that they are going to increasingly more and more, especially with, you know, a poor economy, feeling like they're left behind and that is going to manifest itself in some, you know, really big societal issues? Yeah, definitely. A hundred percent. I think...

you know, if you're a man, no matter if it's in the States or in China, if you're a man and you're raised in a culture where

male emotional expression of vulnerability is stigmatized. - Yeah, even more so. - Even more so, yeah. So it's very likely you're gonna grow up isolated. You will not have a psychological intimacy with other people. You will not be able to practice how to empathize with others and with yourself. So basically emotionally, you will be very cut off

But the power of love and intimacy is when you love somebody, when you get married, when you're in a relationship with somebody, you get to experience what it's like to feel for another person. So it's almost like that softens your heart, that opens up your emotionality to another human being. So you will learn that other people have feelings too. And when you want to...

vent your anger and burst into violence, you will have some sort of empathy. You will have some concern. Maybe I'm hurting other people. But in populations where you're single, you're raised in a terrible background, you have nobody to talk to, and you never felt or experienced what empathy feels like,

Then, you know, when you're angry, when you want to hit somebody, you will not be able to empathize. So there's less like psychological qualities that will be stopping you from committing like serious crimes. So yeah, definitely. I think. Yeah. Like all these come together. Yeah.

That's an interesting point because you think about relationships. Well, one is just to propagate the human species. You have relationships, there's intimacy, there's love. Hopefully you have kids. The next generation sort of lives on.

but relationships just in general, just teach you what you just said, like that other people have feelings. You're not the only one. And when you're born, like the whole, you know, you are the center of your own universe. And then over time you have to get exposed to sort of different things. But some of the aspects culturally is that, well, I can't show that weakness in a, maybe a male dominated society. I have to do all these things. And that has to kind of shift, you know? And then I just think about myself as,

Um, you know, my mom was a very strong presence. My dad, you know, is a little bit more stoic, I think just representing his generation. But my mom was quite, is quite emotional. And I spent a lot of time with her. And I think you guys know that I'm pretty, you know,

emotionally expressive, I guess. You know, like I'm not like stoic most of the time. Like I actually, and I think that goes back to I had that role model and I actually think it's a good thing. You know, so for me, it's more about just sort of controlling my emotions, but I don't have any problems sort of letting it out. And that's really interesting, like the role model sort of around you. My brother's a bit more stoic actually, but maybe it's also personality based. For sure. Yeah. We see a lot of like people like that, right? Like, you know, in Chinese families, typical fathers are usually like,

stoic and very cold and aloof but also we can see that they're really attached to their partners because that's the only person in the world where you feel somewhat okay to open up yourself to you know i love that idea that you said about we have to learn some way somehow that we're not the center of our own universe and it's so true you know growing up

You know, of course, everyone thinks they're the center of their own universe. And some adults still think that even to this day, right? I would say many. Yeah, many. Justin's the center of the podcast universe. But there's, yeah, it's like, it is this like kind of learned quality, right? And it's not like learned intentionally. It's just learned by interacting and building relationships that you do like, oh, my actions have consequences, right?

Not just to me, but for other people. - Especially in romantic relationships, right? Like maybe initially you're driven by your hormone, you're driven by your sexual desire, impulse.

But that impulse directs you to being very sensitive to what your partner wants, right? That's almost like a physiologically forced learning where you have to be more impassive. If you want to get some, then you got to go through the steps and then you train yourself and then over time...

It becomes muscle memory, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's actually a good thing. Beauty and the beast, right? If you don't meet the beauty, you'll remain the violent beast, and it's not good for you, and it's not good for society. So hence, the correlation between unmarried middle-aged men and violent acts, I think this is probably the underlying psychological mechanism. They never learned...

to concern for other people. Well, if you cut down to the, I guess, the core of it all, it's a biological need for a male to fulfill that side of them, right? Whether it's women or men or whatever they're into. And when you're saying that either they're unmarried, single,

That's a big part because that's part of them that's not getting fulfilled. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there is a nuance to be expressed here as well is that there is, I think, probably a huge difference in terms of impact and also psychologically the difference between being

being single or let's say stoic in your mannerisms and in the way you behave by choice versus not by choice. So there are certainly, I think more people today, both men and women who are choosing not to get into relationships or choosing to marry at a later age or choosing not to have children. And these are choices that people make, but then there's probably a bigger population. I'm guessing I have no numbers to support this, but my instinct tells me there's probably even a bigger population who

who are that way, but not by choice. Yeah, yeah. And I think the issue is definitely more serious with men because for women, you know, culturally they are more allowed, it's more acceptable for women to be emotionally and even physically close to other women. So they have gui mi, they have like besties, right? Because then that could be an alternative to...

romantic relationships because you're also bonding, you're expressing feelings, you're practicing how to empathize with other people. But for men, it's like, where do you get an emotionally close partner outside of the whole paradigm of romantic relationships, right? Maybe you're a barber, maybe you're a boxing, like, sparring partner, but...

those are like very limited contexts. You cannot, you can only talk about certain things, right? But it's, there's a line there, right? There's a line. It'd be awkward to cross that line. Xiongdi, right? The Xiongdi concept, right? But also a lot of times, Xiongdi are also just drinking bodies. Yeah, yeah, bro. You know, you don't really talk about personal, you don't really connect on the personal level. Well, let me ask you this then. This raises an interesting question for me.

Do you think one of the reasons why your podcast might be so popular, why people engage with you so much or even listen to us is that we are males, but we also tend to open up on our show. We show emotion. We show emotional vulnerability. We're maybe willing to talk about things stereotypically men don't necessarily talk about. I think it has less to do with gender. It has more to do with just honesty. Hmm.

Yeah. We're like, we're honest and authentic and open, you know, human beings. Just authenticity is very attractive to everybody, right? I have two thoughts on that. But the first one is just, does anyone know, you probably, maybe we don't, is like what percentage of podcasters are male versus female? Yeah.

right now in, let's say, in this region? Because maybe, I wonder if it's still a slightly more male-dominated kind of field in general, but I don't know. Do you think it's like... I've read some statistics. It depends on the topics because if the podcast is mostly about economics, history, or finance, or tech, IT, then it's mostly male podcasts. But if it's more about...

casual talks or personal growth, mental health, emotional relationships, then it's mostly female. Okay. So then that kind of connects to the point, the second point, which is one is that there might be less males talking about this type of topic and how this relates is actually, there's some research done

By Catherine Phillips, the late Catherine Phillips, who was from Columbia Business School. And she did a lot of research around diversity and how that connects to collaboration. And some of her research pointed out that when you see someone that's socially diverse,

to you. So another gender, another race grew up in another country. And when they actually share their opinion, you're more likely to pay attention to what they're saying. Ah, yes. So it's the diversity. So like, for instance, if we're in a group and you share sort of a, an outlier opinion, we might just drown it or crowd it out just because, you know, we kind of tend to mentally shortcut be like, Oh, I know what you're saying. And I don't really pay that much attention because we're seeking this kind of

you know, this consonants. But when you see someone like totally different, or maybe like Steve, like you grew up in, before you went to Canada, you grew up here, right? And so then when you say something, our brains actually process that differently, because we'll say, oh, wait a minute, Steve just said something. I wonder what in his background or education would cause him to sort of say that. And then, you know, I wonder, you know, you said,

females are a bigger percentage of your audience. And I think the data that we saw from our podcast, at least in the last month, it was very, it was much more female than we thought it would be. And maybe it's like one, because there's not as many,

you know, males to your point, Justin earlier that actually share this. And then two, when they hear someone from a different perspective, male and from grew up in the U S it kind of makes them think a little bit different, even if it's the same topic, but it's coming from an angle that they're not used to. I think it's human instinct to want to learn. Right. And by listening or learning from different perspectives,

cultures, races, et cetera. But the same, but the distinct, I mean, I want to note the nuance in the research. The nuance is that you could have

two different groups of people saying the same thing, the exact same thing. But when that person is socially diverse to you, you will listen to it and pay attention a lot more. Yeah, yeah. That's where the research is. I think it doesn't even have to be that socially diverse. It could be like your friend saying something to you, but your wife has been saying that to you for the longest time and you'll be like, yeah, I agree with you. And your wife will be like, I told you like five years ago. 100%. And I was just thinking...

So as I was studying this material, that exact same thought came. It was sort of like your mom tells you something millions of times. And then one day you go to some other kid's house and their mom tells you like, oh shit, I better pay attention. It happens all the time. It happens between us sometimes. I feel like sometimes I tell you things and you just brush it off because it's me. Yeah. And then you'll come in like a month later and be like, and then someone like with actual credibility, like this professor or this like expert somewhere said pretty much the same thing.

He'll be like, hey, did you guys know this thing? You know, based on this, I'm like, I said that to you. He's like, yeah, but you're you, you know? I'm joking, but it comes, it's so true. It's so true. Like, why is that? Is it...

Is it this sense that we feel a person closer in stature and background or shared similarity to us? Is it this idea that maybe, oh, because we're so similar, this is assumption like, oh, I don't need to care where you're coming from because I'm coming from the same place you're coming from. So I already know. So I need to hear from someone else that has maybe a little more quote unquote credibility in my mind. That's saying something actually novel. I, I,

- What you're saying, I think is a really good explanation. I mean, and based on sort of what I've learned is that you just mentally shortcut it. And I think it's not because you do it on purpose. It's not because you lack credibility. It's that that's what makes it comfortable to be with similar people. That's why birds of a feather flock together because we have our code words. We have our code language.

And so we typically just harmonize. It's like, yeah, like we relate to each other because it's easier to be that way. And when that same thought comes from someone else, there is a credibility angle, but I think the research more points out it's not the credibility piece. It's just the fact that it's coming from someone completely different that makes you pay attention more because then you see that like, oh, this person's different. They said this. Why? Why?

Because the whole dynamic of this diversity makes you process information from them differently because you're in a different mode. If I'm with you, we're just mentally shortcutting. We're just riffing off of each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. When you're with someone else, you have to work harder to relate to them, which means sort of to Howie's point, you're trying to understand their perspective, even if it's the same point of view. Yeah. And psychologically, we don't put each other up on a pedestal. You know, you don't do that with your friends or people around.

close or similar to you, right? And then we tend to, even if they don't deserve to be on a pedestal, we tend to put outsiders up on a pedestal and sort of like, oh, what they're saying and, you know, the credibility. I think it's like our brain goes into like energy saving mode when we're with somebody who's close, right? Totally. Because I remember like...

between my wife and I, sometimes we'll have like really boring, empty conversations. It's almost like we're just uttering sounds, but, and like, yeah, okay. And then we know what each other are saying. So like we use so little of our brain to communicate, you know, but that's comfortable. That's very relaxing. - Power saving mode, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - I like that analogy. - Hold on, hold on. Do you guys do that? 'Cause me and Anne literally, like I was in the shower today and I made my noise

And like, but she's a little sick. So I'm like making the noise and I'm not going to do the noise because it's silly. You should do it though. Do the noise. Please do it. We're not going to let you talk. One, two, three. Do it. So I literally do it multiple times, like really loud. And then I'm like, what the fuck? No response. So I'm literally naked in my towel. So you do it again? I walk to the living room and I did it again. And I'm like, hey. And then there's like a very faint response. You do that too? Yeah.

I don't know what that is. I don't know what the noise is, so I can't really say. I don't know what you're talking about. Without hearing the noise, we can't really give any feedback. Just do it. You almost did it. Come on. Just do it. I'm not going to rat Ann out. No, but there's a lot of different noises that you make, right? Totally. They don't mean shit, but they mean a lot. You know what the person is talking... Like for my wife, she will make the sound almost like...

And that means I'm angry, but in a cute way. Oh, interesting. You know, it's like...

So it's almost like she's complaining. And so when she does that, like I know like what she's- Does she have different noises? Oh yeah, we have so many. We have so many like different noises because we love the fact that we can communicate a lot of things with just one sound. So that's the energy saving mode that I was talking about. You know, like when we're close, we love that harmony. We love that synergy. So we don't have to say a lot. But when you're with a stranger-

It's almost like you got to open up and explain everything because you don't know if that person can actually understand you. This goes back to the high context, low context. Yeah. So what's a privilege to be able to communicate with someone like that, right? It's an absolute privilege. It takes a long time to be able to develop those nuances. And in a way, because only you two know there's a shared intimacy and it's also safe because your secrets won't get out. It's funny.

like with us and has like one main noise. And then there's a couple, I would call them noises. Stop talking about noises if you're not going to make a noise. So there's this one main noise, but the funny thing, the funny thing is that it's the, the enunciation, the tone, the volume. So like once, so sometimes I'll just be messing with her and I'll use that same noise, but I'm like, I'm like, I totally understand you. And she's like,

well, like how? And then, so I'll do the noise in five different ways. I'm like, that means you're slightly annoyed, but you think I'm cute. And that noise means you're really angry. And that noise means you want me to hug you. And then she'd just be like, oh my God, you know, like it was exactly sort of, I like nailed it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you can't even predict their responses because you know the person so well. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it goes even beyond noises, but even like mannerisms or like body language, like you can tell like little things. The way they're walking across the room, you can tell if they're angry or they're not or whatever. I'm very disappointed right now. What?

This is an audio podcast and he's not doing the sound effects. Yeah. Or you would think. I'm not going to let you go on that. He's not professional. What the hell, man? This is the honest drink. It is the honest drink. Howie has a great point here. Yeah. That's like me taking my pants off and just like... Not at all. Has nothing to do with you taking your pants off. It's just a noise. Where did that come from? I know. It's just a noise. By the way, speaking of vulnerability, I was watching...

this one documentary about dinosaurs, prehistoric world. They had this one scene where these two, I don't know if they're Tyrannosaurus Rex, but they were predators. And so like a male and a female gendered dinosaurs, right? And as they're sort of trying to decide whether or not they're compatible, what they do to show that they have interest in each other is they walk up to each other and then they raise their neck and

They raise their head towards the sky, and so their necks are facing each other. And the reason that's a sign of intimacy is that in that moment, if one of them decides... It's the most vulnerable part of their body. Sorry, yeah, most vulnerable part of their neck, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. And so then that's like their sign. So sometimes like, you know, if we're in a slight argument or something like that, or I did something bad, then I'll go up and raise my neck and like, truce. It's a truce. White flag. You look like that. I'll raise my neck. That's a really funny picture. Yeah.

That's interesting. And then I do the noise that Howie's never going to know. This idea of vulnerability isn't just a human thing, but it goes back millions and millions of years. How the hell did paleontologists or whoever came up with that? How did they figure that out? Right. Because they literally have the CGI is like perfect animation of what life was like 150. Maybe it's just all BS. Yeah. It could be just one guy in his office being like, you know what? I bet they did this. They got them long necks. I think they did that.

Well, it's like those Pixar films, right? We take animals and we give them human emotions, but maybe it's not. Yeah. Or they all brainstorm and they put it on little cards and into a little box and they're like, all right, let's see who wins this one. What's their vulnerability language? Let's go. No, but this reminds me of my cats because we have two cats and they will lick each other and usually it's the face or the neck part.

right so like because you were exposing that part to potentially being bitten but then instead they show this part dogs do that too yeah yeah yeah well sometimes they lick each other's assholes but that's a different story yeah I don't know how that's done that one's yeah Eric you have a story to share about that between you and Roy okay

- Oh, Jesus. - The direction of this conversation is going somewhere else. - That's the way it goes, man. You know how we got to dinosaur mating and butthole licking. But I love it. So what else? I mean, this is something I ask every now and then to people. What's your level of optimism versus pessimism for the near future?

And whatever you respond, why? Okay. You know, we have a, I don't know if you guys have the same experience, but like whenever we gather, let's say have dinner with friends who are at least intellectually close to me, you know, we'll talk this and that, you know, over a couple of hours. But by the end of the conversation, we're usually just signing, like in silence, like, ah.

You know, like that. So it's like every time we intellectually, we always reach this agreement where things are really fucked up and really bad. Like you just don't know what to do anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like that's the general mood in a lot of the interpersonal context. You mean recently or just in general? I think in general, but recently more so. Like recently, I think a slight difference is that we don't even talk about things anymore.

Because we know we're going to reach that pit. We're going to feel so bad. So, like, we'll just pretend it's not happening, right? So, but that's the pessimistic part. But I think the optimistic part is where, like, just through my work with individuals and also in the inner world with groups, like, we'll consistently see when people are...

when people are seen, when people are understood, they can grow. And when they're nurtured, they can grow psychologically. That always happens. It's almost like a plant. Your water is always going to grow into a tree. So that consistency, I think, provides a lot of security for me and a lot of basis for optimism. So systematically, societally, socially, things are probably not good, but I always believe in individuals.

That's actually why I picked my profession in the first place, because I tend not to believe that, you know, like you were saying, you know, when you have like a policy designer, when you have somebody who's on top, who wants to change everything with idealistic ideas, you

Usually that's not going to work out. But if you can go bottom up, you can change individuals. If you can help them grow, then we stand a bigger chance. Well, they need to match each other as well, right? Like a top-down or purely top-down or bottom-up approach is not as effective. Let's say you go bottom up.

but then the incentives in the bigger top-down system support the individual incentives. If the individual is fighting the government, then no matter how much optimism in that society, then it can be really difficult. But let's say in a society where they, you know,

they sort of encourage or motivate entrepreneurs. They give incentives. So then that bottom of the top down, they're not like sort of clashing. They're sort of- - The top is not concerned about maintaining status quo. They're more open to changes and to innovations. - And they're not like blocking what's happening bottom up.

And so it's like, it's maybe a virtuous cycle, but I love what you said. Like when people are nurtured, you give them a positive space, then they can grow. And it just, that can solve everything, right? Like why do we even have systemic problems?

It's because somehow there's some ossification in this bigger process. And then everyone's sort of behaving in a way that's, it's like a chicken and the egg and this sort of, it's hard for them to escape that. But if you could just reboot the whole thing, right? And start with the positive behaviors, then you could have a totally different outcome.

- Yeah, I agree. And also the problem or the limitation though is that you can only do so much with individuals. Like for example, in a while we can only help them learn how to box and help them learn how to talk to each other, but we can't help them find a job. We can't help them expand their economic life and their financial life.

You can only do so much. If in a society where, like you said, if the top-down approach is also concerned about the individuals, then they will obviously have a better social welfare system, more resources for things like this. But that's probably not happening. Well, it's a culture. And I don't know if this might be a weird analogy, but when you think about people from, let's say...

and not to generalize, but I don't think this is a negative thing. So like people from like Winslow are known to be, you know, very skilled. Business savvy. And I know I have friends that are like Winslow people that grew up in other countries and they've, you know, migrated around the world, especially to Europe.

And they help each other. So there's this optimism, right? So one is the individuals have this sense of confidence that if something happens to me individually, I have a community of people that can support, right? And there's a culture that's been built for whatever reason, I don't know how it happened, where people support each other. It's that collection of individuals and that collective behavior that can either be positive or negative, you know? That's what I personally...

have been really struggling with, I think in the recent years is how do I reconcile my feelings towards or my hope for broader humanity versus how I feel about individuals on an individual level? I think, I think people are great. I don't know how to reconcile that. I don't know how to reconcile this idea of, Oh, like humanity kind of sucks in a way right now, but then on an individual basis, like we're all great. Yeah.

I have a hypothesis just listening to you. I was thinking maybe our brain is not built for a community that's too large. So, you know, the Dunbar's number, you know, we can only interact, have meaningful relations with 250 people. It's like a small village or something. Yeah, small village. So, like, maybe our brain is built in the way that it only fits like a small village kind of life. And the only thing over that is

it gets condensed into that 250 village. - Yeah, I think like when we are thinking on the very massive level, like millions of people, like we lose sight of each other. We lose sight of the fact that they're also human beings. And like we have this built-in capability to empathize, to sympathize with other people,

but only when that person is, that object is personalized. It's like within your vicinity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if we're thinking, for example, policy level or international relations level, then that country, that race, that group, they're not human beings. They're just a group. They're this abstract entity in our minds. And we tend not to use our, you know, empathy when we're thinking of how to deal with them. So, yeah.

That's also why I think trying to rebuild or trying to have meaningful and real face-to-face interaction is so important. Having communities, building small, close communities are so important for modern human beings because gradually we're moving towards me connecting with the world. It's all exciting through the internet, but then you're losing touch with people around you. So you become more and more isolated. Yeah, that's profound. Yeah.

I mean, that's such a deep... That's a mic drop profound kind of thing. And there's so many ways to unpack it, but one of them is just from an evolution perspective, right? Like how much...

much time have human beings lived in small communities and how has that shaped how we're wired? 99% of the time. Yeah, 99.9999% of the time. And then how long have we lived in a world where you can actually view these abstract entities? Literally like 30 years, 50 years. No, this is so interesting because I just recently within the last few days saw this video and it was explaining actually how recent life

of a thing, the idea of a nation state is. And we think, oh yeah, okay, it's recent, maybe a few thousand years. No, like it's really recent. It's like a few hundred years, but history has been altered to think that it's been around for way longer. The idea of borders have been around for a long time and borders have been shifting and fluctuating and border disputes and all these things have been going on. But for up until like very, very recently,

Even people living within the border, and they use like France as an example, a French village or community living in the south of France versus a French community living in the north of France had no identification with each other. There was no communal thing like, oh, we're all French. No, the people in that community...

with that community and not outside of it. And they didn't identify with this idea or concept of a nation state. They didn't identify with people living hundreds of miles away from them as like the same type of people. They didn't identify with the king that presided them, that levied taxes on them. - They didn't eat the same food. - No, they didn't even actually even speak the same language. - Yeah. - So this myth or this like human man-made creation of nations is a super, super modern thing.

And to your point, yeah, maybe like that's just not the best way we should organize ourselves.

You know, when we started doing the In The Wild thing, I had this very interesting transition or change in myself as well. Because in the past, I'm used to talking to my audience over my podcast, you know, through the internet. So it's usually just, you know, a couple hundred, hundreds of thousands of people. But when I interact with them offline, face-to-face, I always felt...

a little bit tight and nervous, like I'm not as relaxed as I wanted to be. But when we're doing the In A While thing, we meet with a small group of people every week, right? And at first, I also felt that nervousness, but over time, I started to relax.

And now whenever I meet them, I feel like I'm closer to them instead of closer to my audience. So it's like I think that the face-to-face interaction in this small group context, I think that changes you psychologically. It's almost like you're – I feel like part of me is activated in that process and I feel more safe and relaxed. Not because these people are –

Like they're similar to me or they could be good friends with me. But just through the fact that we meet with each other. Physical proximity. Physically, frequently. And that exposure creates this weird intimacy where we don't necessarily share the same hobbies and interests or identities or whatnot. But we feel close.

So that bypasses the whole idea that there needs to be identification, there needs to be some sort of common ground and common interest. Maybe not. Maybe that's not the prerequisite for intimacy. Yeah. Well, think about the way people describe intimacy.

military veterans that come back from war or any type of tribe. Sebastian Younger, right? Yeah. And they have this sort of, it's not just the PTSD from the negative, but also the, I guess, the depressive state because they're not around their brothers anymore. Yeah. And I can relate to that in terms of my career where if I'm doing something with a crew of people and then we're finished with it,

I go into a depressive state and that's a general thing that people talk about, you know, when they're doing any type of group activity.

That's a very common thing that we go through. And I think what you just said directly correlates to that. You need to build depth with other people. You need to build trust with other people. You need to open up with other people and vice versa. And only through that can you feel maybe more of yourself, your true self, like you said,

I think you need that. Yeah. And it's probably missing a lot in society today, especially when everybody's so connected to online. Yeah. I read this anthropological study. I forgot where, but...

Basically, they were doing this research on this little island somewhere on the Pacific. And they observed this very interesting phenomenon where strangers, when they meet with each other, even if they don't know each other, they will start talking with each other about random nonsense, random bullshit. But they have to make sure that they're talking with each other. And the purpose behind it is because talking to another person fosters trust and security.

So you're saying that was a cultural aspect that they would be more comfortable? I think that's just what happens in that specific culture. They really value just talking to strangers,

even when you have nothing good to talk about, like you, even maybe you were just uttering sounds, but that's still important because, you know, just, just, just uttering sounds to each other's face. That's the, yeah, exactly. That's, that's, that's maybe more helpful than, you know, having some sort of, uh, opinions or some sort of, uh, you know, uh, intellectual exchange. You know, you,

maybe you don't have to talk about things that sophisticated. Maybe just making sounds in each other's faces will help you, you know? - Yeah. To know that the other person is human too. - Yeah. - Because when you hear a noise that comes from, like we can recognize noises that come from humans.

I think, I'm guessing that if someone made some noise, even if you never met this person before, that you could relate to it being made from a human. But then like if a dog barks, right? Humans don't sort of bark that way. So I think just being like, we're wired with like a, maybe like a very wide, it's like a keyboard, right? We don't, we kind of have,

it's built into our brains. They've actually studied children. Children have the sense of like numbers and different concepts are actually wired into the brain. It's not some things you don't actually learn over time.

but it's actually pre-wired in the brain. So like being able to recognize like human noises, maybe that's already sort of pre-wired. So to your point, yeah, if you hear that noise and then it's like, oh, that's a human being, it's not a wolf, that instantly builds what you said, trust and security. I'm guessing maybe it's the same thing with, you know, boxing. When you're punching each other, you can feel the subtleties. There's the exchange. Yeah, yeah. Like we can tell like there's so many different subtleties in physically or like audio, what's the word for it? Like...

when we hear or when we feel another human being, like we can tell a lot of things without even verbally, being verbally, you know, explicit. That's right. Yeah. And it goes back to that idea you were talking about earlier of just like, just basic physical contact, right? Goes a long way. Yeah. You guys ever heard of this anthropologist, Xiang Biao? So he's in Cambridge. Xiang Biao. Xiang Biao. So he's a very popular scholar in China right now because he's very good at...

spreading knowledge but through very relatable language, very accessible language. So he's been talking about this, so what's it translates into English? It's like the vanishing of proximity, I guess. So it's basically talking about how in modern life, we're losing touch with what's close to us physically.

What's that phrase in Chinese again? 附近性的消失 So close by I guess the vanishing of close by or of you know proximity So like he's talking about basically like you know the neighborhood that you live in right? Like in the past you know

You know the barber, you know the grocery storekeeper, you know the restaurant owner, you know everybody in the neighborhood. You walk around, you buy grocery, you can interact with everybody in your neighborhood within maybe the distance of like 500 meters.

Like that's a small community. That's the proximity of your life. But now it's like, you know, we do everything on our phones and, you know, through takeout, you know, through Ulema, Meituan. So like you don't have direct contact with whoever that provides everything for you. And that, in his opinion, like that's terrible for us.

Because like we were saying, like we need to feel safe and connected by knowing people around us, by knowing like within 500 meters, I know this and this and this person, right? But now we're in a different state. So he's basically saying that's the ground or that's the precondition for a lot of like mental and psychological struggles. You're taking...

And this, I think, is actually relating to what you were saying earlier about we're built from maybe a smaller community and that's what we're used to. But essentially, you're taking all human beings that were...

maybe wired to live in a certain type of environment and you've completely shifted that environment. It's like, it's basically like us going to Mars right now. Right? So you take the entire human population and an extreme metaphor, and then you put them on another planet and then they have to adapt to that new planet. But then like instantly, it's not over a long period of time. They immediately have to adapt. Right.

On one hand, I think humans are really remarkable. I think we are distinctive. I think there's aspects of the way that we are, the way we can reflect, the way we can do things, the way we can imagine things that have never existed that gives us potentially the capacity to be able to flex into these different environments. And that's why the world hasn't totally fallen apart, even though all these things have literally been invented in the span of sort of years, right?

And with Gen AI, I mean, that's like another wild leap. But at the same time, I think it causes a lot of problems. So it's almost like we're engaging in one of the biggest sociological experiments in the history of humankind right now. If there is a god or there is a puppet master, literally they're playing this giant experiment on eight or seven billion people.

And then I want to go make one more point and go back to your point, Justin, on the optimism and pessimism. I love the way, because it's both, right? It's depending on how you look at it. I was listening to Glenn Lowry this morning with one of his friends on his podcast. And he was just saying like, well, on one hand,

the way that we're structured now is creating climate change. So the fact that everyone can live with air conditioning, it's a good thing, right? Like we shouldn't just feel like we're entitled. It's like, it's nice that we don't have to freeze our asses off during the winter time and we don't have to burn up during the summer.

But the problem at scale of modern society is that that's actually going to cause the earth itself to overheat so that it creates another problem of climate change, right? So going back to your point, it's like, well, do we want to just live in these small villages? Well, if we just live in these small villages, maybe there's some problems that we solve, but then like, it's really hard to move humanity forward because then you're just like,

hundreds of millions of independent units and you're stuck in the cave, you're stuck in the stone ages, right? Whereas if we can collectively harness our intelligence as a society, I would argue that that is also a feature of humankind and we have to wrestle with the trade-offs. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. - The first thought that pops my mind after hearing what you just said is what is moving humanity forward?

You know, like, what does that mean? There's an entire universe of debate just to be had around that in the idea that that's a very man-made construct. Yeah. Because it's very self-serving, right? If you look at it from the natural order of things, you know, animals don't have this thing of like, oh, we need to move. Alligators don't think like, well, we need to move alligators forward, right? It's just like you live and you procreate and you survive. And, you know, like I've said before, like, you know, there are certain animals and especially insects that are

way more successful at having survived for a longer period of time than humans have, right? And so this idea of moving and progress and moving humanity forward, although from a very humanity-centered perspective, we think...

it's a good thing, but really, is it? Because like you said, it does create other problems and new problems that we wouldn't have if we were to just live in villages, right? And yes, we wouldn't have the internet maybe, and we wouldn't have AI, but do we really need these things? Or are these things just creating new problems that we're chronically having to solve? Okay, so first of all, I think it's the point that...

There are arguments on both sides. I think, I mean that if we kind of zoom out a little bit, right? Like whether you're in a big society, large society, there's no perfect society in terms of the size. But I take your point, like you have to think about these things, right? And again, it's a tension. Like the bigger you are, you have certain advantages at scale and then the smaller you have other advantages. But then you also think, well, what if you're born in like Siberia? Like, so then every village has to fend for itself. But how humans are wired together

and how well we can then adapt, and then the societal structures, all these intersect in extremely compelling ways. So you could argue both sides,

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But I think people long for sometimes that smaller group. If you could have all the benefits of a larger society and then like live in New Zealand in a small community. Exactly. Well, maybe there's like a happy medium, right? Exactly. So like maybe countries like United States and China, like we're too big maybe. Right. And then obviously shrinking it down to a size of a village is too small.

But maybe there's a happy medium, right? And we see like examples of this. Scandinavians, yeah. You have these smaller countries who seem to be living, you know, like have like very high rates of like livelihood and happiness and all these things. Yeah. Well, like, well, here you guys are like, I thought of a couple of things. First is I thought of Francis Fukuyama. So he's the, you know, the,

he talks about politics and he talks about that, like the, we used to believe there's the end of history. So we're, we used to assume that we're, our political system is progressing towards a even better, a better and better direction. But he's saying probably not, you know, cause look at the, it's so obvious. Like how could you have that conclusion? Like, Oh, we're at the end point. It just seems in retrospect, that's such a dumb idea. Yeah. And also combine that with the fact that humans are,

on a personal level, on a genetic level, is very, very imperfect. We have so many flaws. We have so many imperfections. Well, not imperfections, but just like mismatches between our genetic traits and the current state of our society. Like we have so many flaws and imperfections. I think like...

Small villages or large countries, they're just ideals that we create. Different people will believe in different directions. But I do feel that there's no one answer that can solve all the issues. We're just...

In the words of Joe Rogan, we're just a bunch of naked apes, monkeys running around and trying to figure out what things are good for us. But I think in the process, we're going to make a lot of mistakes. But I guess the reason to be optimistic is that we, at least on some levels, we can self-correct. We can realize, okay, this is not working. We're going to do something else.

But it's just that for how long does it take before you can realize, you know, you got to self-correct. That's the thing to worry about because, you know, sometimes we take too long. We make too many mistakes. How much suffering needs to take place before we make those corrections, right? Yeah. If you look at the, let's say, for example, the evolution of the legal system in China, right? Usually it's because something happens, you know, everybody's upset and then they will make a new policy that's,

probably a little bitter than before, but then that's also, that comes with a lot of cost of human lives, of damages. Yeah. And that might be one of the most powerful capabilities of human beings is this notion of reflection and self-correction. I mean, when Gabor came on the other week, right? Like he, you know, it was like this ability to actually reflect is distinctively important.

human i think right i don't know if other animals have it but i think we have it at the most developed level and then the ability to actually self-correct so um if you know like let's say an asteroid or meteor is coming hurling at the earth right and we know it's going to hit in 25 years like we can actually be aware of that try to reverse it climate change and so i think that's one of the most powerful abilities of a human being is like to recognize the mistakes right

right? Or when things are not going in the direction that we want them to go or need them to go, and then potentially put together some type of plan to correct for that. And I think that's quite powerful. But the, you know, the prerequisite to that is that you have to be honest. You have to accept you have made mistakes. But that's the thing with like social media or with media in general. It's like there's so many lies and

When we make mistakes, we can try to cover it up with more lies. And that's also... That goes back to the point of proximity, of being close to other people. Because face-to-face, we're really good at telling lies. If somebody's lying, somebody's kind of hesitating in their tones, we can tell immediately. But if you...

Watch a video online. If you read an article online that's lying, it's very hard to tell. Or if you live in a village and your house is on fire and someone asks you, oh, your house is on fire. You say, no, it's not. I mean, behind you, your house is on fire. They can see it. There's no way you can get out of it. But a person living hundreds of miles away, you can say, oh, no, it's not. And they would have no reason not to believe it. And reputation in a small village. Yeah.

is so important. Like you can hide in the bigger world. You can do all kinds of bad things and just move on, you know? But like in a small village, like think about, you have to live your whole life knowing that you're gonna see these 150 people. What you're gonna do every single day is gonna be very, very different than if you're like completely anonymous. And that cuts both ways because then in that small village, right? Just imagine like just all the little things you could do potentially wrong, right?

without even knowing and then you're branded like forever and think about all the temptation it's like you just have 150 people so if you do anything you date one person like forever people are gonna know that so there's that's why like in these small places my my understanding talk to people is like it's kind of dark sometimes because over time those lies and these backstories accumulate and then people just want to get the fuck out of that small place that's true interesting

But I think from another perspective, though, that creates pressure for morality. Like transparency, I think it's the...

it fosters morality, right? Like you can't lie. You can't make mistakes. You can't treat other people unfairly because everybody's going to know. And it's just, it's just, I just kept having this feeling that, you know, like we're just really struggling to find, figure out what's right and what's wrong. And either way we go, there's always, you know, there's always obstacles and we'll always realize, okay, this is probably not good. We got to go somewhere else. Well, one thing that we were talking about before we started recording was,

Think about being more defensive, being a little bit more aware, right? Learning different techniques or, you know, what to do in certain situations. Can we talk a little bit about that? About what you're thinking about that? That's from like a very personal preference or personal perspective. Like I'm somehow like I'm – it's almost like my brain is very attuned to things.

detecting danger like I always fantasize in a spidey sense yeah yeah yeah have you always been that way yeah yeah just like hyper vigilant about threats not in the sense that like I'm always nervous but just that I think it also comes with training like martial arts training so that you know you're aware that something happens you know you gotta be fast and you gotta protect yourself and you gotta and

And it's almost like by training, you realize you can improve your way of reaction, your strategy of reaction and your speed and the effectiveness of reaction. So once you realize that through martial arts training, you start to think that maybe all the dangers in life, you can somehow prepare for it by rehearsing, by gaining the knowledge beforehand.

Even like in psychotherapies, like we will talk about how initially the main goal is to heal, you know, the wounds. But over time, when you move on from your past trauma, what's next? What's next? You know, what do you do next? And one of the things you definitely I think people definitely have to do is to prepare for the future, prepare for illness, prepare for danger, right?

for deceit and for death, right? Like those things you have to kind of practice because otherwise when it hits, you will be unprepared. So I'll give you an example. So my father had a very close friend passed away, I think two years ago, and he was devastated. And like I called him almost every day the week after the person's death.

And because of my learning and my professional knowledge, I was able to support him.

And I was actually really proud that I was able to do that because otherwise he could have nobody to rely on because that's a sensitive topic for a lot of Chinese, especially for like middle-aged Chinese people. I remember in the first episode we had with you, you mentioned that your dad has very high death anxiety. Yeah, that's the other thing. Yeah, that's the other thing. So it's like I was so, I feel lucky that like my work, my profession prepared me for

situations like this where we can talk about death, loss, grief, you know, in a reasonable way, in an objective way, in a constructive way. So like this is something that you have to prepare, right? Otherwise, you know,

when somebody dies or something happens, you or maybe people around you, they will be devastated and there's no protection. So I guess this is the reason why like, you know, I'm very sensitive to, or even sometimes I fantasize about something happening and I would think to myself, am I prepared for that?

Like what things would you fantasize about happening? Like physical attacks. Like actual physical danger. Physical danger, yeah. Like someone attacking you on the street? Someone attacks me or maybe you have a brawl with somebody, bar fights or, you know, cars ramming through people. Everything.

Anything you can imagine. It's not that I'm violent and I enjoy the blood, the rush and stuff like that. But it's just that I don't want to be in the position where I don't know what to do. It's so weird because when you were talking about this whole idea of preparation or maybe over-preparation for dangers and etc. Justin mentioned that he's been having certain moments like that as well. And I said that ever since having my children.

I find myself constantly imagining situations happening and it devastates me.

For example, I would all of a sudden imagine I'm playing with my kids and all of a sudden I imagine them falling, breaking their head or just random things just constantly happening. Yeah. You know, oh my God, they're going to fall and knock into the corner and then blood's going to go everywhere. You're like the most messed up stuff. And I see it because I'm a very visual person. So I imagine everything happening and it hurts to the point sometimes I tear up in the moment because I'm like, what am I doing? Jesus Christ, get out of it.

Why am I thinking such negative energy? And then I'll hear my wife's voice because she says that sometimes I get a little too negative. And she's like, don't bring that negative energy here. It will happen if you keep thinking about it. It's almost traumatizing me. I want to say maybe that's the experience of love. When you love somebody, you feel like that.

So I have exactly the same feelings towards my wife. I don't remember if I said this last time, but there's a period where we go to bed, when we go to sleep, she falls asleep, and for some reason I couldn't sleep. So I lie on my bed, and my mind starts wrangling, and then one of the things I think about, I fantasize, is,

Someone broke in? Someone broke in or she gets into some sort of dangerous situation and she dies. Or maybe she gets injured. And then I get devastated too. I'll be like,

- Like what I do. - Yeah. Like in the beginning, I was so confused by this kind of thoughts. You know, why am I thinking this? 'Cause it's just like the superstitious belief that we have, right? You think about it, it's gonna happen. So if you think from that perspective, then you're not gonna like all your fantasies. But later on, I found some reconciliation, which is that, you know, you can only think about, you can only have this kind of thoughts

for people that you care about. If it's people that you don't care about, you think about it, meh, okay, whatever, you know, but you're tearing up and you're devastated and it's because this person matters so much to you that you can't afford to have that happening. So I think that's part of loving somebody or that's the price of loving somebody.

you know, I love the fact that you're saying that because I, I relate because I also have these thoughts, like these intrusive thoughts. Right. And it's not like I'm trying to think of them. It's coming to my head. Yeah. And,

It was so intrusive for me that I was worried that, oh, am I like secretly a psycho? Am I like a psychopath? And I love what you said. It's like, it's so true. These thoughts will only happen with people you love, right? And that's why it becomes so disturbing to you. And the more disturbing it is, the harder it is not to think about it. Yeah. I was...

Just trying to find the term for this. So I just typed in the chat, GBT. Is there a term for constant thoughts about bad things happening? And one of the ideas that came back with this word catastrophizing and says it's a cognitive distortion where a person anticipates the worst possible outcome, often out of proportion to the actual likelihood of that happening.

you know, outcome. So I think that that's really interesting, right? So first, if you care about something, someone, then of course, you're going to think about all the possibilities because that's just human nature to protect, right? So it's not a bad thing to kind of reframe it. And then two is, but if it's out of, if the frequency, right, and the types of outcomes are out of proportion to the actual likelihood, then that's where then you can do some reflection, right? Or I guess you have to have some conversations around that and really

try to process that and reframe. And then I think the third thing that's related to this that I've thought about before Sam Harris, I learned about this from Sam Harris, which is counterfactual gratitude, which is instead of you're catastrophizing, you're thinking about sort of negative possible outcomes. But then instead of like worrying about that, what you say is, Oh, because this is unlikely to happen, I'm so grateful that it hasn't happened.

Because you just, like you've had bad things happen to you before. And then you're like, God, if I just hadn't made that choice and it didn't happen, I wish I wouldn't have fucked up that way. And luckily we haven't most of the time. But I think to like Steve's, I think like to Steve's idea here is that you just like, you probably fully intellectually acknowledge that it's unlikely to happen, right?

But in the case that it happens, you want to be prepared, right? Just like knowing where the exits are on an airplane, right? Like you want to know. It's unlikely that anything's going to happen, but you kind of want to know. Yeah, because again, it's about evolution, right? Like we live in urban environments and it's extremely safe. But 99% of the time we live in...

fucking mountains and forests and it's full of danger. So we definitely have that spider sense, you know, and I think it's so normal that we're looking actively for danger because that would be good for our survival, right? Yeah, because you were saying something that you got a reaction out of Justin and I when you were saying that

For example, when standing at the corner of a street, you would stand behind a light post or a pole just in case a car went a little crazy. He got something to block you from that car swerving into you. And the likelihood of something like that happening is 99.9% not happening. Yeah.

Or like in New York, when we used to take the subways, I would never stand near the ledge. Yeah, you would never know. Yeah, unlike Shanghai, there isn't a barrier. It's just open. So if someone were to come behind you, they could push you in. And that's happened before. Yeah. And so like I would always like stand like way back. I'm always super aware of like what's behind me. So even when I walk, sometimes I will look over my shoulder just to...

Like for no reason, I would just check, you know, if there's somebody walking too close to me or when you're waiting for subway, I never stand...

somewhere where somebody could be step behind me. I always stay close to the wall or somewhere, you know, that I can make sure nobody's behind me, you know? 'Cause you don't know if somebody is gonna push you. Even that, that won't happen. - But it does happen. And this goes to what I was saying before we were recording is that yes, statistically, a lot of these things are extremely unlikely to happen, right? It's like the chances of it happening are like you winning the lottery. Yet every year,

it does happen to however many hundreds of people in the world. And so if you are so unlucky that it happens to you, all the statistics in the world don't mean shit to you in that moment, right? It's like being a shark bite victim. Every year, there are hundreds of people that got bit by shark. You know, to them, those statistics don't mean a damn thing. That's true. But I mean, to push back on that piece, it's just like, well, then you should never get on a plane, right? So like...

that people have fear of flying because, oh yeah, to the people that, you know, that happened to. So I think if it's really rare to that point, there's nothing you can do to prevent it because there's so many other things in your life, like getting a heart attack or something that are way more likely. So when you, those are cognitive biases, but I don't disagree because that's the true raw emotion. No, you're right. It is cognitive bias because it's like much more like,

Like it feels like much more of a threat, even though it's much less of a threat than let's say a heart attack. Right, right, right. So I think it's fine. I think there's two things. One is that as long as it doesn't disrupt you from living a normal life, if the fear...

of the fear, like, you know, if the fear it's like, it's like the COVID thing. We were more afraid of like the constant, not the actual disease, but like the fear of the stigma of all that stuff. Right. So if the fear of something becomes so great that it's disabling, then you have to kind of step back in their mindfulness and other, other kinds of things. I think that's, that's sort of one piece, but I think going back again to what Steve was saying, there's this idea of normalization of deviance, right?

Which is that most of the time, like everyone's always walking around looking at their phone, right? And I'm constantly trying to remind myself when you're crossing the street, don't look at your phone. And still I can't help it. And so what normalization of deviance is that you continue to do something that has some small chance of causing some kind of disaster, right?

Right. And then over time, you just get looser and looser and looser and laxer and laxer and laxer in your behavior. And then some, someday something bad really happens because you keep sort of getting closer to the line of something. Right. So there is a role for a level of discipline in your life, like eating, right? Yeah. If you do it once, nothing's going to happen. But if you do it over and over and over, that's what actually happened to the space shuttle, right? When it blew up the O-ring, the whole thing, which is that it launched so many different times. Talk about challenger.

Is that Challenger? Yeah, I can't remember. Is it 86? Yeah, Challenger. And, you know, there's lots of sort of like, they've done all kinds of studies in business schools as well, why that happened. It's basically, they knew that someone was wrong, but then, you know,

many, many launches successfully launched. So they, they normalized that deviance. They normalized that error. They built false confidence. They built false confidence. And then, and then, you know, when, so I think there's a role of sort of discipline as long as it doesn't cross over to a catastrophizing sort of cognitive bias. So it's all about reframing it. Yeah. My way of dealing with this is just to turn it into a hobby. Yeah.

you know like for example when I when I take a walk with my wife like sometimes I would secretly imagine I'm her bodyguard and you know when she's oh my god yeah you do that too so crazy dude

What the fuck? Like when she's crossing the street, she's looking at the phone like, don't look at your phone, look at the cars, you know? And when we finish crossing, she goes back to her phone and I'm like, okay, job well done, you know? You got the earpiece. All right, listeners, this is your therapist. This is the person you're trusting to help you become, no, I'm kidding. I do that with my kid now. So whenever I take him out to the park,

I'm always like pretty vigilant. I'm always looking around to see if I, like, I feel like anyone's following. Intercepting any type of danger. Well, there's that too. But then like, I go a step beyond that. I'm like, are there any people here that I feel like are following me?

Right? Yeah. Are there any shady people lurking around that I feel like... And so... If you turn it into a game, it's actually pretty fun. It is actually pretty fun. So, you know, it's gotten to this level where he's playing around in the park and there's a bunch of people in the park all the time and people have their phones out, right? And they're either on their phone looking at messages or taking pictures of things. And whenever there's a phone pointed in the direction of my kid...

I'm always hyper vigilant and I stand in the way of that phone because I'm thinking, are they taking pictures of my kid and sending that picture to like some like kidnapping ring? And I know it's ridiculous, but I can't help myself but to react to it because I physically be like, well, I could do nothing right now because it's probably nothing. But what if it's like that 1% chance that it is something for me to just to stand in the way of that camera is nothing for me. So I'm just going to do it anyway.

And I justify it with that. But it is a slippery slope because once I – like to Eric's point, once I normalize that, what am I normalizing next? Well, if you think about all this like reasonably, then first you got to have a proper assessment of what's more likely, somebody kidnapping your kid or –

maybe some other type of danger that's less harmful but more likely, right? If you spend too much resource, cognitive resource, on focusing on preventing one danger that's less likely, then you will probably not be able to prevent other more likely dangers. So that's also strategically that's not a sound choice, right? So I think it's also about just assessing different risks and being –

tune yourself to the more likely ones. Yeah. Yeah. But in general, I think it's, if it could be fun for you, if it's a, you know, good, good activity to kill time, then, you know, I like, I really enjoy doing that. Do you do, do you ever do the knife wielding one? Like if you're in a public space, like a mall or,

or like a grocery store or something like do you fantasize like oh if someone came in here with a knife right now like a crazy guy like what would you do yeah I think I think like I've watched videos where you know you have like knife attackers like if if the person is if I'm to the back of the person's to the person I will probably think of taking him down hmm

I thought about how to take down jiu-jitsu moves. Like be the hero in a situation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably, right? But if the person is facing me, then definitely run away. I'm not taking any chances. And the other thing, well, it doesn't even have to be stuff like that. It could be just what if you lose your phone? What are the steps that you take?

to retrieve the phone to prevent it from being stolen. You know, there are steps you can take. That's far more likely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just like the knowledge like this, you gotta be, you know, if you have time, you turn that into a hobby. Like Liam Neeson is happening, right? Like taking Justin Yang and taking four. Well, you know, one time I was in Tianjin and I was in this mall

And I'll share this really quickly. I was in Tianjin and I was working with retail outlets and we had a pretty big team there. And then I was like walking around in the mall and then I saw like a guy with a knife, right? And I was like, what the fuck, right? And then I saw him like,

kind of try to attack someone else that had like one of these big pole thingies. And then I was like, what the fuck? Right. And then I'm like, okay. So in that moment, I'm like, I'm trying to, you know, figure out what I need to do. Right. Obviously I'm not going to go subdue the person. So immediately I was like, who do I know back in the store? That's a security guards.

you know and then i went back and i ran back i'm like hey i need to report this there's some knife attacker and then they were like super chill and they laughed they're like oh yeah that's uh they're doing an exercise today yeah oh so yeah yeah but i actually had that fear and in that moment and i was like okay i'm gonna make sure where they where are they so i did pause for a moment because like i can't just like leave this well it's very telling that they would have that exercise in the first place yeah why are they having like no one got no one gave me the fuck

fucking memo. Eric runs to them and is like, have we been practicing our habits and mindfulness? Or just like whenever those air blast sirens go off in Shanghai every now and then. I never know if it's a test and I have to check my text message. Oh yeah, I got it. Is this more after you had the kids?

It's intensified since the kids, but it's always been a little bit in me. For me, it's like in the last couple of years after being married, I have some of these fears sometimes. And I just think about, oh, what if something happens to my wife? Yeah, I think it's a combination between...

Getting older, also having children, also getting married, and also what has been happening in the world. Yeah, yeah. We've all been going through some shit. When we grow older, like, we become more realistic. We know what the world is like, right? When you're young, you're ignorant. You don't know what the world is like. And you think you're going to live forever. Yeah. There's always a seed of truth in our fears, I guess.

Steve, man, it's always such a great time having you here. I was so excited to have you back. This has been a wonderful conversation. Like I said before, my wife is like the biggest fan of yours. I'm like sick and tired of your voice right now, to be honest, because every time I get in the car, your podcast is playing.

Too much time went by from the last time. Yeah, you gotta be right. It was so much fun. But anyway, this was such a pleasure. Steve, anyone that doesn't know your show already, how do they get in touch with you? My podcast is called Shidi Fushuo, so you can find it anywhere. Cool. All right. That was Steve. I'm Justin. I'm Howie. I'm Eric. All right. Be good. Be well. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace.

I'm the man.